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latest Finale looking up as regards MIDI playback

To Lee and others interested in this issue of \"Why are notation programs so clunky as regards playback, and when are these software designers going to get with it?\" I wanted to share some correspondence I just has with Finale; things are looking up, it seems.

The pdf file I cannot steer you to here, but those who are interested could contact Finale & they\'ll share it with you. Basically, the (new) program looks for instructions like \"rit\" and \"crescendo\" and gives you something reasonably lifelike.

Probably a big shrug for those whose home-base is a program like Cubase, but great news for us Finale & Sibelius addicts - or anyone who dreams of getting a good demo from a notation program, not having to dump all your data from one program to another ...

Finale 2004 (which will be released for OS9 very soon, but is already out for OSX), has a feature called Human Playback. What is does is it reads the score when it plays back. So if you put in a tempo change, or a dynamic change (gradual or sudden), or you put in a trill or tremolo, Finale will automatically play it. Overall, this feature will respond to virtually anything that you put into the score. It even reads the parts to see what instrument they are written for, and if a effect is not appropriate, it does not play it. This feature also has several style settings, just as 21 Century, or Classical, or Romantic. There is also a Custom Setting were you tell Human Playback what to respond to. To give you an example of what this can do, here is the page on our website about Human Playback (http://www.finalemusic.com/finale/fe...n-playback.asp). It gives a side by side example of with or without HP. Note that all of this is done in Finale, without a sequencer.

So - just to be clear - both tempo and dynamic markings are respected with what is called \"smart font?\" I assume, if so, parameters are adjustable (i.e. \"molto rit.\" can be adjusted as to howe \"molto\" it is?)

Thanks!

CS

Hello,

Yes the parameters are adjustable. Here is a pdf file of all the text items Human Playback responds to.

Re: latest Finale looking up as regards MIDI playback

\"anyone who dreams of getting a good demo from a notation program, not having to dump all your data from one program to another ...\"

The reason I share this dream is that I don\'t like having two data sets.

In a perfect world I would be able to complete my notation perfectly and then I\'d touch it up or re-record the parts in the sequencer. After the mix, I\'m 100% done with it.

Or maybe I complete the performance in the sequencer, quantize, move the MIDI to the notation program and make perfect notation, then it\'s 100% done.

The problem comes if you want to make a change after you\'ve split the files. Once they\'ve been split you have to do the edits in both domains - or you throw one away and do that file from scratch after adding the changes.

Someday the line between notation and performance will blur away. But probably not this week.

Re: latest Finale looking up as regards MIDI playback

A nice summation of the issues, Jon (or issues).

I am considering doing a massive upgrade from my Finale 2000 program runing on OS 9 to Finale 2004 on OS 10. I don\'t know how many people on this message board share our interest in this area, but I wonder if we can get some chat going here on how ready for primetime the new version of Finale is? (they just started shipping Finale 2004 for Mac OS 10, but OS 9 version has been out for awhile).

The \"human playback\" feature certainly sounds attractive in the demo. But searching through the Finale forum for dirty little secrets I hear a lot of talk about fonts not loading correctly, and an even more worrisone note about the program running slow (I have a Mac G-4, but it\'s an early one, not the fastest computer on the planet).

So, to the intrepid ... how\'s Finale 2004 working out for you folks? Am I inviting unexpected anguish into my little studio?

Re: latest Finale looking up as regards MIDI playback

A nice summation of the issues, Jon (or issues).

I am considering doing a massive upgrade from my Finale 2000 program runing on OS 9 to Finale 2004 on OS 10. I don\'t know how many people on this message board share our interest in this area, but I wonder if we can get some chat going here on how ready for primetime the new version of Finale is? (they just started shipping Finale 2004 for Mac OS 10, but OS 9 version has been out for awhile).

The \"human playback\" feature certainly sounds attractive in the demo. But searching through the Finale forum for dirty little secrets I hear a lot of talk about fonts not loading correctly, and an even more worrisone note about the program running slow (I have a Mac G-4, but it\'s an early one, not the fastest computer on the planet).

So, to the intrepid ... how\'s Finale 2004 working out for you folks? Am I inviting unexpected anguish into my little studio?